Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon.
]]>Faced with losing jobs, 20% unemployment, with more to come, and a refusal of creditor nations to subsidizing them, this does not seem likely to have a happy ending. Expect Greece to default and then they’ll really be in a world of hurt, and because apparently due to their own nation habit of living off of someone else’s money. Blaming the creditors for their own financial behavior across decades strikes me as displacement. Cannot help but wonder if we’re not doing the same thing, except on a larger scale.
]]>His presentation and book (Attack of the Theocrats) show in no uncertain terms how religious exemptions are harming and even killing children and lots more. Basically these religious exemptions require secular people to follow one set of rules, while church based groups get to ignore the law with impunity. It is a blatant double standard.
Obama recently announced that all Insurance companies must comply with national standards requiring coverage of birth control. There is nothing more fundamental for a woman and her sexual partner than to be able to choose whether to reproduce and to have no-hassle access to birth control. It has become an American right.
John Boehner is once again on the attack and demanding that only secular health-care facilities should have to follow this policy. He calls Obama’s call for even application of the law “an unambiguous attack on religious freedom in our country”. He gives no explanation why it is okay for secular intuitions to be required to follow the law.
He goes on to say:
“In imposing this requirement, the federal government is violating a First Amendment right that has stood for more than two centuries. And it is doing so in a manner that affects millions of Americans and harms some of our nation’s most vital institutions,”
I believe when religious organizations get into the health care business they need to follow the health care business laws, just like the rest of us. That is what separation of church and state is all about. Religious double standards should not be allowed in the law.
Boehner quotes:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/john-boehner-birth-control-rule-reversal_n_1262930.html
Sean Faircloth talk (36 mins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mEyc2Qw83aE
]]>My thesis here is that religion or theism is something that the majority by far of the human race have in one way or another expressed throughout history, although in mostly western parts of the world, it may be declining and/or just becoming largely irrelevant. Most of human history is replete with instances of wars, genocide, slavery, systematic bigotry and abuse of others; and indifference to the sometimes preventable plight of others. Since religion is something that the great majority of people endorse, in one way or another, it is inevitable that religion becomes associated with those instances. But there’ve been massive wars and injury visited on each other that have little if anything to do with religion. Communist Russia comes to mind, but there are many other non-religious instances of group violence as well.
I propose that it is not religion that is a primary influence, even though it has been oft touted by the conflicting tribes, but more basic human traits to covet someone else’s resources, goods, services, women or sexual access or land, and to seek to secure those by force. Throw in as well the common human disposition to view those perceptively different in terms of skin color, body type, etc., as “different” and as “not like us,” and the “we/they” dichotomy arises. Given in that dichotomy plus wealth differences, and conflict is likely to arise.
Eradicating theism in order to improve the general welfare of the human race is to me like proposing to improve WBCC by changing the flags that fly over a capital, without addressing the more basic causative influences of access to resources, political power, and social control. Of course religion plays role, as perhaps one of the teeth on the wheel that drives people, but only one of many and not necessary nor sufficient. Little kids in a play ground exhibit the same conflict behavior with each other with no religious issues involve at all. “I want that toy,” “this is my sandbox,” “he isn’t like me,” “do as I say,” all with no theism involved at all.
I think I’m saying that religion is or may be epiphenomenal to much more basic traits of the human psyche. This is not a defense of religion or theism, it is to suggest that maybe our energy could be more usefully directed at measures that constrain the traits I listed as an example.
Now I could and have, a little, lambasted Answerer for his (to me) muddled thinking; or BM for his pathetic attempts to somehow validate himself as a person whose thoughts are worth considering; or Sara, whose captivating and sometimes endearing vacillations and decision-making avoidance often drive me nuts; or ..well, who cares?
People do, and have done for thousands of years, what they do. A truly scientific view recognizes that and does not denigrate those behaviors, but acknowledges them and then seeks to identify the antecedent referents that associate with the resulting behavior. Sorry if that last sentence isn’t sexy or dramatic. This forum should be, IMO, for thinking, not emoting. I violate that too many times, as do others here.
]]>To me, one issue is the idea that a sovereign country and has not attacked outside its borders nor threatened to do so, is on what basis forced by external military measures to change it’s government?
]]>http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-harte-population-20110721,0,715317.story
What to do? Stop the denial. Perpetual growth is the creed of a cancer cell, not a sustainable human society.
Promote and support family planning education at the family and community levels as a cheap way to reduce poverty and severe climate change. Support organizations that are trying to get contraceptives to the 200 million women in the world who lack and want them, and help them obtain equal rights, education and job opportunities. Access to contraceptives and reproductive freedom are rights, not luxuries, that ultimately benefit all of humanity. Vote for leaders who vigorously promote those humane solutions. And demand that media start educating the public every day on the role played by the unsustainable human numbers behind environmental degradation and human calamities — and start covering the solutions. The public needs a constant message: “It’s time to stop growing and become sustainable.”
We can do many things to solve environmental, economic and social problems, but each is a lost cause if we cannot bring our populations down to sustainable levels.
Okay, will someone please tell me how a person with any intellectual capability what-so-ever would ever consider the republicans while they are fighting family planning?
Overpopulation is the number one threat to long-term human survival. The republicans will gladly sacrifice long-term human survival for current electioneering.
]]>1. Personal insults, repeated
2. Thread hijacking
3. Trolls who post absent any evident inclination to have an discourse on the subject
I’ve been here now more than anyone else, if not as qualified nor meritorious as many others. But if it is the intent of the owners of this forum to promote a civil and rational discourse, then I suggest that they need to get off their asses and apply some editorial courage.
If not, then my respects and appreciation for this forum. I’ve enjoyed it.
]]>]]>...the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that the economic stimulus Obama signed into law added—in the 4th quarter of 2009—between 1 million and 2 million employed workers and boosted the GDP between 1.5% to 3.5% higher than it would have been without the stimulus.
In addition, a more recent CBO study—for the second quarter of 2011—found that the stimulus raised real GDP between 0.8% and 2.5% and lowered the unemployment rate between 0.5 and 1.6 percentage points, compared with what would have occurred without it.
And another analysis, by economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi, estimated that the stimulus raised 2010 real GDP by 3.4%, held the unemployment rate about 1.5 percentage points lower, and added nearly 2.7 jobs to U.S. payrolls.
Looking solely at quarterly Gross Domestic Product, it’s gone from -6.7% in the first quarter of 2009 and -0.7% in the second quarter of ‘09, to positive territory ever since—including 2.8% the past quarter.
And looking at monthly payroll statistics, the numbers have gone from a loss of 818,000 jobs in Jan. 2009—when Obama took office—to 16-straight months of positive job growth, including a preliminary gain of 243,000 jobs in Jan. 2012.
Interesting read.
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